Greetings my friends!
A couple of weeks ago I invited you all to support my writing by signing up for a paid subscription to this newsletter. I am so blessed by those who responded. I have no disappointment or condemnation for those who did not. I will begin thanking my paid subscribers by giving them my memoir, Every Place I’ve Never Been, in increments. It’s about what life was like for me as a missionary kid in Papua New Guinea. In it, there are true stories of life in the jungle, travel by dugout canoe, and going down into active volcanoes.
This is the first increment of the memoir. I’m offering everyone the first two chapters. If you like it, and want to keep on reading, please sign up for a paid subscription. Not only do you get to read the memoir, but you get to support the kind of writing you appreciate.
By the way, I recommend using the Substack App to read this. It’s a pretty good experience for reading longer pieces.
Thank you again, SO MUCH for your support. Without further ado: the first few chapters of the memoir.
AIRPORT
PORT MORESBY, PAPUA NEW GUINEA. 1989
The airport is hot and crowded. Seething masses of people push and rub, trying to get to ticket counters to receive boarding passes. Inwardly I groan. My heart is full of Papua New Guinea, and all that she means to me, and I only want to sit down quietly someplace and let it all overflow into tears that will somehow wash away what is inside and make sense of it for me. I’m not prepared just at present to deal with the hot, sweaty, noisy reality of the country I am leaving with such sorrow. But deal with it I must. Grimly, I tell myself that since I am already covered with sweat, pushing into the middle of the crowd won’t really change anything. Ironically, I imagine that in a few days I will be ready to give anything to be stuck in this hot, cloying atmosphere, with sticky red betelnut clinging to my shoes and bag.
With a deep sigh, I commit myself, entering the swarm with gusto, pushing for all the world like the New Guinean I really am inside. We haven’t completely grasped the concept of lines here yet, and so we wriggle and push good naturedly to gain a spot against the counter. When I get there, I can see from his features and coloring that the ticket agent is not native to the Port Moresby area. He is clearly from one of the tribes along the northern coastal part of the country, which means he speaks Tok Pisin, my language, rather than Motu, the dialect around Moresby. I am sure he speaks English as well, but I like my chances better with a New Guinean language.
I wave my ticket at the agent, shooting off a staccato burst of Tok Pisin. In addition to using a language familiar to the agent, my face is white, which makes me stand out from most of the rest of the crowd. It isn’t fair, I suppose, but I have the agent’s attention almost immediately. He serves me quickly, smiling, and I thank him, pivoting for the return trip through the relentless horde. As I start to push my way out, the man directly behind looks at me with a question in his face. He too, is from one of the northern tribes.
New Guineans are very expressive people, and much communication here is effectively non-verbal. I know immediately what he is saying without words: “How did you do that?”
I look at him and shrug with a grin, replying to his unspoken question in Tok Pisin: “Triam tasol!” It was worth a shot.
He grins back, grasping my shoulder in the easy instant friendship of the New Guinean, and then heaves himself past a stooped, aged woman, toward the ticket counter. He gets past her, but takes a solid elbow to the ribs in the process. I shake my head ruefully and battle my way out toward the seats of the waiting area.
Free of the main crowd, I make my way slowly through the hot sticky airport toward the international waiting lounge. I wait while my new Adidas bag is searched, and then I find a quiet seat in the cool, almost empty air-conditioned room. I have taken my first step out of the country. I cannot leave the international lounge, except to board my plane when it is time. A wave of weariness and grief return to me, and I lean back, close my eyes and let the memories wash over me. The heat seeps slowly away from me under the force of the air conditioning, and I am drifting back to another time, just outside the door of the room in which I sit…
PORTMORESBY, PAPUA NEW GUINEA, 1978
I am a little, white-skinned waif sitting on a pile of luggage, surrounded by a sea of dark-skinned people. I am somewhat used to this – I was a minority in Hong Kong too. But I am worried about all the criminals in this country. Somewhere, two weeks and a lifetime ago, in a different part of the world, I heard a well-meaning American lady telling my mother something about New Guinea.
“I’ve heard the crime is terrible there. You’d better be careful.”
But I can’t tell who might be an ordinary person, and who might be a criminal. There is a wide variety of facial features. There are short men, much smaller than my dad, with wide noses and deep-set brown eyes. There are a few tall aristocratic-looking men wearing shirts and ties. Their noses are thinner and their eyes sharper. I suppose it might be unusual for criminals to dress well, but I don’t know.
And so I am sitting, arms and legs extended across the growing mountain of luggage, my eight year old face screwed up in what I think is a vicious snarl. The snarl seems to be working, because no one comes near. It doesn’t occur to me that the odd, twisted expression on my face might lead them to believe I have a tragic illness.
My dad is walking away, looking for our seventeenth piece of luggage - a backpack, filled with forty pounds of camera equipment. My mom is gone, looking for a our ride. I feel that to leave my sister Jill and me all alone to watch our things is a foolish risk in this crime-ridden society. However whether it is because they think my disease is contagious, or because they heard that Jill had beaten up Mark Thorson in second grade, no criminals harass us.
~
We are at another airport now, the sixth or seventh of this journey, I think. It is called Nadzab. Dad is explaining how World War II was fought here, at least part of it. Another American has met us. He's telling us about the local political situation that causes us to have to land 20 miles from Lae, while there is a perfectly fine airport right in town, sitting unused. Nadzab has potential, I think. Aside from the obvious benefit of the World War II history, there are spaces for food concessions and stores, and the painted cinder-block and cement makes it look official, almost modern. But it is empty. Nothing occupies the concessions, and there are hardly any people here. It's too far from town, the American explains. As we haul our luggage out to a van, we pass a green electrical box boasting a sign which forever typifies the Papua New Guinean government for me. The sign says, in English, “Danger. Low Voltage.”
“This is our last airport for a while,” says Mom reassuringly. In the short term, she's right. We're almost at a place we’ll call home.
Unfamiliar palms and giant rain-trees flit by the windows of the van as we drive through the jungle on the precarious-seeming, potholed strip of asphalt that is the road. Apparently it is a good road, according to our American friend, potholes notwithstanding. Anything with any amount of blacktop in this country is a good road.
The heat and humidity beat down through the van windows. The only windows that open are at the front, and so I press my face against the glass here in the back, to catch as much breeze from up there as I can. I start to drift in and out of awareness. I have long since forgotten what time my body thinks it is, and it is with vast relief that I hear the American say:
“We're here!”
“Here” is a campus of blue cinder-block buildings encircled by a road that leads to the driveways of various dwellings. This is Martin Luther Seminary, which the American calls “MLS,” and Dad will be a professor here. The entire complex is bounded on one side by the main road, which is blocked by beautiful high hedges of some yellowish-red bush that I have never in my young life seen before. In a semi-circle starting and ending at different points on the main road, the jungle looms around the back side of the complex. We roll down a green grass driveway, into a carport with no walls, adjoining a long, low, single story house with a galvanized metal roof.
“When it rains, the water runs off the roof and into a cistern,” says Dad. “We'll drink rain water here.” He seems to think this exotic. I am more interested in the bathroom. For eighteen time zones and six countries, my mother has been asking me if I need to go to the bathroom. It seems only natural to start my new life by finding a more permanent place to answer nature’s call.
The house rests directly on its cool cement foundation, and all outside walls are taken up with floor to ceiling louvered windows. Each room is equipped with an electric ceiling fan, and shade trees surround the outside. Every possible measure has been taken to mitigate the hot moist air that marks the climate here year round. Even so, the heat is thick and oppressive.
Later, I rest on my bed, shirt off, the fan assisting the breeze which drifts in from the coast, two miles away. I am as tired as I have ever been, but somehow I cannot sleep. The buzzing of the cicadas and other insects is almost deafening, and I can feel the bright heat beating on the house around me. My mind is numb, and yet somehow, this is a defining moment. Something that began two years ago in Hong Kong is starting to coalesce and solidify. I no longer belong to the place I have left. I do not yet belong to the place where I am. I do not know it yet, but this feeling will haunt me for the rest of my life.
FIRST DAY
I am awakened by the ringing of a bell. Not an alarm bell, or door bell, but a real old fashioned bell, like churches used to have. I stare at the ceiling for a minute, wondering where I am. It's light out, but I'm not sure if it's supposed to be morning yet. Then I hear the birds. They are incredibly loud, more raucous than Beacon Hill Primary School in Kowloon at lunch time. I hear hoots and catcalls and screeches and all sorts of weird noises, but somehow I can tell they are all birds.
“Hey,” says Jill from the bed across the room. This doesn't surprise me. No one could sleep through this cacophony.
“Hey,” she says again. “I hear a cat.”
We have been promised a cat. We had one in Hong Kong, but for some reason we couldn't have one in America. I remember how Dad sat in our living room in America and drew us a picture of our house here, and told us that because there are so many windows and because they stay open all the time, when we move here, we can have a cat.
I hear what Jill is talking about. It is a mewing sound, like a lost kitty that is looking for a nice American family to adopt it.
I get out of bed. I am still wearing my clothes from last night. So is Jill. Mom gives us reluctant permission to go outside and look. The cat isn’t in front of the house. The lawn is wide, and recently cut, and we can see there is nothing there. In back we find jungle with no paths. It’s not the sort of place you can walk into, even if you weren’t worried about snakes and spiders. The vegetation is high and thick and thorny. We call in vain, but the kitty keeps mewing and never shows itself.
After more calling and searching, Jill grudgingly admits the possibility that the mewing sound is coming from a bird.
“It doesn't sound like a bird,” I say. Even though I didn’t think it was a cat at first, now I want it to be.
“You haven't heard the birds here, stupid,” she says.
“I'm not stupid.”
“Then don't act like you know what all the birds here sound like.”
As much as I hate it, Jill's logic is always impeccable. We go back inside the house.
Mom and dad are discussing the problem of breakfast.
“There's not even a restaurant we can go to?” Mom asks Dad.
“Not one at this time of day,” says Dad. “Besides, we don't have a car.”
“Halloo!” this voice is coming from the open kitchen window that looks into the carport. “Halloo!”
There are two children in the carport, a girl and a boy. They look like brother and sister, and the girl looks about two years older than the boy, just like Jill and me. In fact they look like they are our exact age.
“How can we help you?” asks Dad, although we are definitely the ones that need help.
“Our mother would like to invite your family to come for breakfast,” says the girl. She has wheat colored hair. “Next door, here,” she says, gesturing toward the only house that is next to ours. She has some sort of accent, I think.
We pull ourselves together and walk over. Our neighbors introduce themselves. They are the Gerickes, German missionaries. Helmut teaches at Martin Luther Seminary – MLS – where Dad will also teach.
The boy tells me his name is Olaf. This is amusing, because until a few weeks ago, my dad was on the faculty at St. Olaf College in America. However, I don't laugh. A couple years ago, I might have laughed out loud. But when I was six, we moved to Hong Kong. I learned there that many strange names exist in the world. The Chinese names were all normal enough: Paul Tseng, David Wong, Alice Woo and things like that. But the British names were paradigm bursting – things like Crispin Howe and Bernadine Watkins-Lewis. So I don't laugh at Olaf's name.
I won't realize this until later in my life, but I am becoming something different than most of the people I knew in America. I am already instinctively adapting to my circumstances and reacting to the unusual with a quick, protective calmness; while inwardly I am analyzing the situation to see how I should react. I'm learning to pick up on faint clues and hidden nuances, because if I don't, I must admit that I am completely out of place, and that in fact, I don't know where I belong at all.
I am a third culture kid.
“Do you also drive the bike?” asks Olaf, showing me his handsome bicycle.
“Yes,” I say, ignoring his strange way of putting it.
There is an awkward pause. Then his mother calls us for breakfast.
I know I am only eight years old. But I have eaten at the finest McDonald's in Hong Kong. I have had Shakey's Pizza in America. I have eaten dim sims in the back streets of Kowloon, and even once had a real thirteen course Chinese feast in Sha Tin, where I carefully spilled some food, as was the proper Chinese custom, so as to show the host how much I appreciated it. Even so, I have never had anything like the German breakfast Mrs. Gericke invites us to.
The table groans with the weight of tropical fruit: pineapple, papaya, bananas and a few things I don’t recognize. There are soft boiled eggs in little cute egg cups. There is fresh German bread. There are sausages, also German, and German cheese. And most of all, there is Nutella. Nutella is a chocolate-hazelnut spread made in Germany. I think maybe it could change the world.
I am interested in the German language. Olaf and his sister Astrid speak my language. Maybe I should learn to speak theirs. The Cantonese that I learned in Hong Kong does not appear to be useful here in New Guinea. I say something, and my mother is quick to encourage me. Ingrid Gericke offers to teach us and my mother accepts. So I begin to learn my third – but not last – language.
In the evening after we are ready for bed, Dad gets out his guitar, the way he used to sometimes in America and Hong Kong. Sitting outside the door of the room I am sharing with Jill, his strong clear voice rises in the night with loves and laments in the words of Paul Stookey, John Denver, Joan Baez and the other great folk singers of our time.
He sings, The Last Thing on My Mind. It’s a song about loss, regret, leaving and change. And we know that he is there and we are family no matter where we are, and somehow the song he sings is us.
Slowly the thick heat seems to seep behind my eyes, and I can't keep them open any more. Finally, the toll of distance and time take their due from my body, and I slip into the dark unconsciousness of the tropical night.
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